U.S. patent applications Ser. No. 09/109,804, filed Jul. 2, 1998, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,108,619, titled “METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR SEMANTIC CHARACTERIZATION”; U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/512,963, filed Feb. 25, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,152,031, titled “CONSTRUCTION, MANIPULATION, AND COMPARISON OF A MULTI-DIMENSIONAL SEMANTIC SPACE,” and U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/615,726, filed Jul. 13, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,197,451, titled “A METHOD AND MECHANISM FOR THE CREATION, MAINTENANCE, AND COMPARISON OF SEMANTIC ABSTRACTS,” provide a framework and mechanism in a computer for providing a “quantized” meaning-representation. But the semantic meaning of documents is not the only factor controlling interpretation of the documents. People have emotional responses to the world around them. What one person might view with emotional detachment can cause another person to respond strongly. Even more, people can have different emotional responses to the same content, depending on their point of view. For example, given an article proposing abortion regulation, many people would vehemently oppose the regulation, while others would avidly support it. Currently, however, no mechanism exists to enable users to automate the process of identifying and responding to documents or other content to which the users have an emotional response.
The present invention addresses these and other problems associated with the prior art.